Street Kids Direct works in partnership with its sister charity in Guatemala called Mi Arca. Duncan Dyason and other volunteers work with Mi Arca and visit the children on the streets each week and offer them unconditional love. The aim of the street outreach is to build trust with those living on the streets and then help them take advantage of the options for leaving the streets.

An exciting development is that the street team will soon be offering a mentoring programme to the street children. A bus has been converted into a mobile clinic, classroom and mentoring centre and will be used for the mentoring of the children.

2. KIDS AT RISK

With your support we could help prevent so many children who live at risk every day and some will try and avoid those risks by deciding to live on the streets. No child decides to live on the streets unless there are really good reasons for doing so. Those reasons maybe the death of a parent, being abandoned or runaways from abuse.

The street team try and focus on areas where we know children already on the streets have come from. We then try and identify those children most at risk and help provide support, advice and mentoring. Our aim is to enable the children to know they have people in their lives who can help them and who will support them when life is tough.

3. CHILDREN'S HOMES

Street Kids Direct has committed itself to the Manuelito Project in Honduras who care for 43 children aged from 5-18 years, most of whom have been rescued from the streets of the capital, Tegucigalpa. There are a few children who have been abandoned or who were found to be at high risk of living on the streets or even at risk of severe abuse or neglect.

Your donations help keep the home open and provides the children with all they need to enjoy a life away from the streets. It is amazing how quickly the children adapt to life in the home but do need a lot of help and support in working through their life prior to coming into the home.

4. CAPACITY BUILDING

Building capacity sounds fancy but it is all about helping equip our partners to become stronger as organisations and better able to help the children in their care.

Duncan and the team visit all our project partners and offer training in Child Protection, Charity Management, Personnel Development and bringing new ideas, games, sports and activities to the staff and children.

Street Kids Direct helps to strengthen the consortium of local organisations in Guatemala City. We encourage all those organisations working with street and high-risk kids to coordinate their efforts.

5. DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS

Due to the number of years we have been involved in Central America we know the importance of building long-term sustainability.

Thanks to the support of UK investors a company was established in Guatemala which now runs a small farm and when the farm begins to create profits then a percentage of those profits will be used to help support the charity work.

We are always looking for new business partners to help our project partners.